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What Proof Does a Woman Have to Have?

Just over Heather Millstone’s shoulder, next to the cash register at her bar, a black-and-white TV monitor showed the flow of life along a few square yards of 13th Street between Avenues A and B in the East Village.

More than two years ago, the same video system recorded two police officers as they arrived at the apartment building above the bar four times in four hours — once on official business, then sneaking back three more times in secret, after creating ruses.

At noon on Thursday, Ms. Millstone stood near the monitor, quaking, lips pursed. Not long before, she had learned that the two officers on the video had been found not guilty of raping a drunken woman in an apartment four flights up from Ms. Millstone’s bar, Heather’s.

“Only one comment,” Ms. Millstone said, finally. “Heartbroken.” She tried out some other words — rage, betrayal, sadness, fury — before settling again on heartbreak. “Heartbroken,” she said, “and in disbelief.”

Thanks to the circumstance of having a camera that watched the street in front of 506 East 13th Street, Ms. Millstone could provide investigators with a video that pierced a fog of evasions and fictions created by the two officers about the hours after midnight on Dec. 7, 2008. The recordings documented that they had gone into the woman’s building at times when they had claimed to be elsewhere.

Without the tape, prosecutors said, the case would have been virtually impossible.

It showed that around 1 a.m., a woman was escorted into the building by two police officers, Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata. They had been called there by a cabdriver who sought help getting the woman out of his taxi.

The next morning, the woman, 29, testified, she woke up naked except for a bra, in a puddle of vomit, and believing that she had been raped the night before by a police officer. She testified that she took a shower and then went to the apartment of friends in the building. They took her to the hospital.

That morning, two other friends went to Heather’s, and asked Ms. Millstone if her doorman had seen anything unusual the night before. Ms. Millstone told them about the surveillance camera. They began to log the events on the tape.

The police officers escorted the woman into the building at 1:10 a.m., and left seven minutes later. They returned at 1:52 a.m. and left in 17 minutes. Their next visit was around 3 a.m. and lasted 33 minutes. They last were seen entering at 4:27 a.m., and leaving at 5:07 a.m. In all, they spent about 97 minutes in the woman’s building.

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Afraid to go to the police, the woman and her friends testified, they spent much of Monday seeking out acquaintances with connections in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The woman filed a complaint on Tuesday.

The Police Department had only a single documented record of a visit to the woman’s building by Officers Moreno and Mata: after the first call from the taxi driver, at 1:10 a.m..

Over the next several hours, the officers placed a false call to 911 about a homeless man in the vestibule of a building near the woman’s, to have an excuse to be back on the block. The bar surveillance camera showed them going into the woman’s building. Later, the officers reported they were going on a meal break. Instead, they went back to the apartment.

What happened during these visits was not the subject of any videotape, but of a swearing contest between the woman and the two police officers. Saying she had gaps in her memories of the night, the woman testified that one of the officers had peeled down her tights and raped her as she lay face down on the bed. She did not, she said, realize the officers had left and returned several times. In the morning, she testified, she found that blinds that were usually open had been drawn.

Mr. Moreno said that he was a recovering alcoholic, and that he was concerned about the woman’s drinking; he said he resisted advances from the woman, even when she took off all her clothes except her bra. Instead, he said, he spooned with her on the bed, and kissed her on the shoulder.